Daily App: har•mo•ny 2 will stimulate both sides of your brain

Borderleap is making a name for itself in the puzzle game genre, launching both the color blending game Blendamaze and the sliding tile game haro.moo.ny last year. Not resting on its laurels, Borderleap is back again with haro.moo.ny 2, which landed in the App Store last week.

Haro.moo.ny 2 is a new version of the popular Haro.moo.ny game that offers new music, new levels and, of course, several new categories of color palettes for you to solve. For those who haven't played the original version of haro.moo.ny, the game is a sliding tile puzzle that challenges you to move colored tiles around the screen in order to create a color palette. For example, an early level may require you to move the blues to the top row, the aquamarine tiles to the middle and green titles to the bottom.

The gameplay sounds ho-hum, but the addition of limits on the number of moves adds some cerebral challenge to the game. You can't just swap tiles and move colors around without any forethought as most tiles on the board are assigned a number that tells you how many times the tile must be moved. For example, you can have a green tile with two dots -- these two dots tell you right away that you must move that tile twice in order to place it in the proper spot and clear the level.

Haro.moo.ny 2 has a ton of levels that'll keep you busy for a long time, as long as you can slog through the early stages that teach you slowly how to play the game. I found these early levels to be too easy and too numerous, especially for users who enjoy playing games for any length of time. If you are the type of player who grabs a few minutes here or there, then you will be able to tolerate the repetitive nature of the early stages with minimal complaint.

Besides the gameplay, haro.moo.ny 2 also features a pleasing minimal UI and a professionally produced soundtrack that provides soothing background music to help you relax while you think. Haro.moo.ny 2 is both a stimulating intellectual game and relaxing sensory experience successfully wrapped into one application -- I like to call it an experiential puzzler. Borderleap also did away with the in-app purchases in haro.moo.ny 2, allowing you to pay up front for the game and not worry about having to purchase an undo or a skip.

haro.moo.ny 2 is available as a universal app in the iOS App Store for US$1.99